FrightFest 2022 Day Five Reviews: PIGGY, BURIAL, EVERYBODY DIES BY THE END and FALL.
Our man on the ground Stuart Wright reports back from Day Five at FrightFest with a look at PIGGY, BURIAL, EVERYBODY DIES BY THE END and FALL.
PIGGY
Written & directed by Carlota Pereda
Sara (Laura Galán) is the unhappy, overweight daughter of the butcher in a small Spanish village. A clique of three mean girls make her life hell and have given her the nickname that is the title of the movie ‘Piggy’. At the local lido a stranger of few words, played by the very un-Spanish sounding Richard Holmes, is hiding in plain sight, judging people on their behaviour. In the credits he’s referred to as Descondido which translates to Unknown - perhaps a nod to the ambiguous nomenclature of ‘the Shape’ in the original HALLOWEEN (1978). Sara goes for a swim when no one else is around. All her anxieties and body shame are to the fore as she builds up to just leaving the changing rooms and getting in the water. Poolside she meets the eyes of her bullies. They taunt her, almost drown her and steal her clothes. All under the watchful eye of Descondido. On the long walk home in just her bikini, Descondido pulls up alongside the sun burnt Sara to show her he has captured her bullies and has them tied up in his van. Sara has a choice here and chooses to does nothing to help and so implicates herself in the towns sudden mass murder mystery.
In a peculiar twist to the killer on the loose storyline, an understanding grows into an unspoken relationship between Sara and Descondido that will lead to our body shamed protagonist having to make more life or death decisions for people who have made her life unbearable.
Galán is superb as the reluctant centre of attention, and then the confused, frightened and secret witness who wrestles with owing her tormentors nothing. Consequently, PIGGY is moral maze of a film. The bullies are cruel and ruthless, but do they deserve to die? Can we root for Sara in her silence? It’s compelling viewing as saying nothing leads her deeper down the rabbit hole of a killer who has taken a shine to her. The police net and anxious parents close in on Sara until Descondido ups the stakes with an attack on her family home and steals her away with him to be together in his lair. Only then does Sara begin to act against Descondido’s wishes.
PIGGY was originally a short that was expanded to a feature. It is a character study that sits somewhere between a slasher film and a revenge thriller. However, the final girl is never in doubt from the start, she has clear motivations for retribution, but she’s not the killer. In the end, the people of the village who want their missing children back appear to be Sara’s greatest threat, and not the killer which is a very peculiar way a see a genre film.
BURIAL
Written & directed by Ben Parker
Dame Harriet Walter plays unassuming Brit Anna Marshall. It’s 1991 and she’s a seventy-year-old woman living alone with her jack russell Gulliver and The News at Ten for company. Reports are coming in of the collapse of the USSR when a home invader breaks in, but he soon finds he’s bitten off more than he can chew. Anna was ready for him and not only that, she demonstrates a cold-hearted mean streak that belies the perception you have in the opening three minutes of seeing her. Flashback to the end of the second world war and Anna, then Russian Officer Brana Vasilyeva (Charlotte Vega), is heading up a secret mission to bring Hitler’s suicidal remains to Moscow for Stalin to exploit.
As they close in on the Polish train station that will get them the rest of the way, they come under fire. It starts with a single shot to the Russian truck driver’s head. It’s a shocking moment that will perhaps recalibrate your expectations for the film. Their attacker is a lone Nazi Werewolf sniper. This is not sudden leap into the supernatural, but a reference to a real Nazi guerrilla organisation who operated in the shadows and now the war is over, they’re a rogue troop with no one to answer to.
Brana’s march to Mother Russia grounds to a halt. Plus, their prized cargo is maybe not as secret as she first imagined. With their truck out of action, they regroup in the woods. Their plan is simple; lie low and find new transport in the morning. Comrade Vadim Iilyasov (Dan Renton Skinner), a constant thorn in Brana’s side, has other ideas. He wants to let off a bit of post-war steam. Against Brana’s wishes he takes a couple of the men to the village for beers and whatever else he can get his slimy hands on. The Nazi Werewolves execute a second attack. Headed up by the maniacal Josef Mengler wannabe, Wolfram Graeber (Kristjan Ukskula), their counter mission is to make it known that this body is fake Hitler, so the Fuhrer’s reputation as a strong man of Germany dies with him. Whereas Stalin wants to show that the monster of millions of dead Russians is just a cowardly human who took his own life rather than face the consequences of his evil actions.
Tom Felton (Draco in the HARRY POTTER films) enters the story during this smoke filled forest fight. He is Lukasz, a Polish man with German ancestry. His bravery and local knowledge is a great help to Brana’s men, but his mixed identities mean he has no obvious side to align himself with post-war. Burial teaches you that people like him would’ve been rejected and treated with suspicion by both the Russians and Nazis. However, his daring deeds earn the Bolshevik’s trust and he, and his family, become useful allies in the struggle to kill off this determined bunch of Nazis who are still fighting for Hitler. Felton really gives it his all as the haunted nowhere man desperate to give his post-war life a purpose. Whereas the diminutive Vega (WRONG TURN, 2021) leads from the front from start to finish, as the cool as ice, lone woman fighting both the enemy without and the enemy within – Russian men who don’t respect her rank and authority. You can feel the weight of a nation resting on her shoulders as the hope for success is slowly chipped away.
The seemingly indestructible Tor Olynik (Barry Ward) is captured by Wolfram. He wants information about Hitler’s location, and is quick to get his syringes out. No doubt these implements are still warm from all the evil procedures he no doubt performed in the name of the Fuhrer. This torturous sequence will have you squirming in your seats.
Everything turns in the Nazis favour when a Russian traitor trades his life for information on Hitler’s whereabouts. A final gun battle begins and the outcome ensures that neither the Russians or the Nazis get what they wanted. As the dust settles on the smouldering ashes of one more act of violence, director Ben Parker returns you back to 1991, Anna’s intruder, a British neo-Nazi gets what he came for and (perhaps) what he deserves for even trying to find it.
BURIAL is a rip-roaring COMMANDO COMICS style action adventure, with a few good scares to keep you on your toes. It plays fast and loose with the myth of what happened to Hitler’s dead body, in a similar way to how Quentin Tarantino painted a picture of assassinating Hitler in INGLOURIOUS BASTARDS (2009). In doing so it absorbs real historical details into its fiction to provide you with a fascinating window into a very uncertain time for the world. A time where the brutality of war still lingers and death hasn’t quite ceased to be everyday occurrence.
EVERYBODY DIES BY THE END
Written by Ian Tripp
Co-directed by Ian Tripp & Ryan Schafer
EVERYBODY DIES BY THE END starts in the near past. The horror filmmaker Alfred Costella (Vinny Curran), a real L’enfant terrible is being put through his interview paces by a downbeat, deadpan cable access tv host played superbly by the always brilliant Bill Oberst Jr. Costella is paradoxically loud, obnoxious, and yet somehow enigmatic. Imagine the infamous car crash interviews that Quentin Tarantino and Robert Downey Jr both endured at the hands of the UK’s Kristian Guru Murphy before walking out as the camera rolls.
Fast forward to the present day and documentarian Calvin, played by co-director Ian Tripp, is about to hit the road and go make his next film – the documentary of Alfred Costella’s next and last ever movie - EVERYBODY DIES BY THE END. The intervening years since the interview at the start haven’t been kind to Costella and after being ostracised by his film peers, this will be his first film shoot in years. Out to the desert, Calvin finds the cult horror filmmaker has surrounded himself with devoted sycophants. They dress how he wants, and act on his every whim. He’s surrounded by people who facilitate all of his worst, and most toxic behaviour. No one questions his actions, or motivation, until Calvin shows up.
Costella’s aggressive directorial style is from another era. This is a man out of time with 21st century expectations on a film set. He bullies, manipulates and tricks his cast into the performance he desires, and thinks that that approach is fair game in the pursuit of a great film. It’s clear Costella’s mental state means he maybe shouldn’t be making films anymore. Calvin’s documentary is fast becoming the story of a man on the brink of imploding. And boy does he implode.
The humour is pitch black and the film comments smartly on changing attitudes in society. Naturally, Costella crosses the line between acceptable and unacceptable many times. Curran’s magnificent portrayal of the ‘deluded genius’ film director is at the heart of everything that’s good about this film. His performance really dials up the mania brilliantly. Even when he’s taking a back seat in a scene, his presence draws all the air of a room – in a good way. It’s quite the up and down performance, and the film really benefits from the energy and chaos he generates. As the kill list grows, the cast and crew dwindle in number until there’s just Costella and Calvin’s camera. How he goes, is one hell of a last cinematic hurrah – and FU - to the Hollywood people that ostracised him.
FALL
Written by Scott Mann and Jonathan Frank
Directed by Scott Mann
Crushed by the grief of losing her husband in a climbing accident, ex-thrill seeker Becky (Grace Caroline Currey) is now withdrawn and drifting through life in a haze of booze. Hunter (Virginia Gardner), who was also on the mountain that fateful day, is now a busty blonde adrenalin junkie YouTube star off to film her next video dare and wants her best friend Becky to come with to the desert and show her 60k followers them climbing up and down a 2,000-foot, rust eaten, radio tower – once the highest structure in the world. Becky takes some convincing, but in the end agrees it’d be a fitting place to scatter her dead husband’s ashes and she can ‘kick fear in the nuts’ as Hunter would say. The climb up the tower, while precarious, is completed with little more struggle that Becky needing to catch her breathe once or twice. Scott Mann revels in setting up the hidden dangers our two leads don’t see as they ascend this rickety construction. Loose nuts and bolts rattle and shake – any one of them on the brink of falling free from its fixing. The first 1,800 feet of the climb is caged within the confines of the structure, but the final 200 feet is up an exposed ladder. The durability of its fixings seem even more suspect. The bomb, as Hitchcock’s theory on suspense goes, is seen by the audience and tension can now just slowly build in the audience’s mind as you make a mental note of the perils that await them for the descent.
Their grief curing moment together, culminates with the most stomach-churning selfie. It’s not the first time those of you with a nervous disposition or fear of heights will be wanting to look away from the screen. Like with the opening act of 127 HOURS (2010) you are made to feel these kind of fearless idiots deserve everything they get, while at the same time you’re screaming at the screen to hurry up, pack it in. You don’t have to wait long for the daring feat to begin to unravel – just half an hour or so of the run time is done when the real drama starts. All the vertigo inducing camerawork of Spanish cinematographer Macgregor (Vivarium, 2019) now gets blended with nail-biting action as Becky’s descent is cut short by the disaster you were waiting to happen. The 200 feet of exposed ladder loses a few nuts and bolts and bingo, it gives way under her weight and falls to ground. Leaving Becky swinging on the end of a rope secured only to Hunter’s harness. The fearless daredevil pulls Becky to safety, but without that ladder they are stranded, 2000 feet up, on a ‘pizza box sized’ platform without any water and a life-saving conundrum to solve. In the build-up to this endurance nail biter so much is innocently set up and paid off to devastating effect as the two young women try multiple ways to raise the alarm to their presence up the tower. As they try, and fail, try harder and fail even harder, FALL proves itself to be a smart rollercoaster of a film that makes a lot out of the tiniest of locations. Both Currey and Gardner are brilliant and are a physical match for anything director Scott Mann throws at them. A favourite moment is the vulture inspired nod to CONAN THE BARBARIAN. There’s cruel twist after cruel twist as their limited options run out and the odds of the young women living to upload Hunter’s ‘amazing’ footage gets worse and worse. It is said that the writer’s job is to get the main character up a tree, and then once they are up there, throw rocks at them. FALL takes this theory to its absolute extreme.
